


Late Bloom of Deception

by CruelisnotMason



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Culture, Angst, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Canon Universe, Complicated Relationships, Deception, Enemies to Lovers, Flowers, Friendship, Gay Lotor (Voltron), Hurt, Kissing, Language of Flowers, M/M, Making Out, Not Canon Compliant, Voltron Rarepair Week 2019, canon story changed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 00:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20751689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CruelisnotMason/pseuds/CruelisnotMason
Summary: “So you’re saying,” Pidge starts, adjusting their glasses, “that Lotor, half-Galra and former archenemy of Team Voltron gave Keith a flower?”Written for Voltron Rarepair Week 2019





	Late Bloom of Deception

„He did what? “

It’s Friday evening – although evening is a relative word in space – when Team Voltron gathers in the big common room of the Castle of Lions. That is, all except for Keith.

Hunk repeats Allura’s words in an almost insultingly slow pace. “He gave Keith a flower.”

“You’re shitting me,” Lance exclaims and makes a ridiculous big gesture with his hands that almost results in Hunk getting a hit in the face. The Yellow Paladin dodges in time, but almost falls of the comfortable round couch they are currently sitting on.

“Hey!” he complains, and Lance gives him some space, shifting a little to the side.

“So, you’re saying,” Pidge starts, adjusting their glasses, “that Lotor, half-Galra and former archenemy of Team Voltron gave Keith, who hated him from the start, a flower?”

Allura nods, a weary smile growing on her face. “Well, yeah,” she says reluctantly.

“And you let that happen?” Lance almost yells. Nobody gets what it is to him, aside from his need to make everything into a huge drama as always.

“I _only_ witnessed it, Lance,” she says in the thick Altean accent that rolls right off her tongue. “What should I have done?”

“You should have put a stop to it!” he exclaims harshly. “We can’t let our Team sleep with the enemy!”

That’s the final straw that makes Pidge snort and elbow Hunk who shows her a giddy grin.

“What’s it to you, Lance?” Allura asks, getting defensive. It’s no wonder. Since Keith and Shiro came back from the Blades’ headquarters and Keith’s Galra ethnicity had been revealed, she kept dodging him, or didn’t even acknowledge he was there. Lance, in his usual energetic and dramatic voice, opens his mouth, but the words don’t come out. He closes it again.

“He’s right,” Shiro suddenly says. “There’s a possibility that he’s planning something.”

The Paladins look at Shiro, who sits there, arms crossed and lost in his thoughts. It’s the only he says before he gets up from where he sat, a little further away from the others. “If you excuse me now, I will get an early night today. My head is hurting a little.”

It’s a reoccurring thing: Shiro leaves early, giving only a short excuse. Everyone accepts it wordlessly, because they all have been seeing how he gradually looked worse every day since a while now.

When he’s gone, Pidge whispers: “Do you think he minds?”

They look to Allura, who’s probably the best to read Shiro’s reactions by now. She shrugs. “I don’t know. I think he’s overworking himself, frankly.”

*

It’s weird to come back, even if it’s only for a couple of weeks as the Blades must reorganize their headquarters and sharpen their security measures. There’s nothing for Keith to do there, so he came back to the Castle of Lions. He wasn’t exactly expecting everyone just standing there with open arms and welcoming him, but the lack of reaction was still a little disappointing. On top of it all, his best friend is emotionally unavailable.

Maybe it’s his own fault. He never considered that leaving for the Blades would distance his former team from him in the way it does now. More than before, back on the Earth, Keith feels alone again.

This time again, he hides away in the hangar where Allura and Lotor are usually discussing the build of their new ship all day long. Keith hops down from where he sat down on the white stairs, walks towards the ship and stares at the glossy surface, the slim design. He extends one finger to carefully touch the exterior.

Not a fan of the color, he thinks, but in the end, he also won’t be the one who flies it.

The ship is cool to the touch, the finish is glittering in the dim light. Keith exhales and only notices how much tension he had held within him, a result of the constant anticipation to be around Allura, who hates, his crew, who he’s not friends with, and Shiro, who he can barely recognize. At night in the hangars, he feels like he can be himself again.

He blobs down on the platform in a dowdy manner, right next to where the ship stands, mind occupied with the upcoming missions he will return to at the end of the month. His legs move back and forth from where he lets them dangle over the edge.

All of a sudden, there’s a cough coming from the other side of the room. The door must have opened without a sound, because Keith didn’t realize someone stepped into the hall with the high ceiling.

“Care for company?” Lotor asks politely, as he already walks down the stairs toward the platform. Keith doesn’t think he can stop him from doing so, so he just shrugs. He observes as the long white hair swings from side to side but casts his eyes down as Lotor throws him a confident smile.

His feet halt next to where Keith sits, but he doesn’t squat down or sit next to him. When Keith looks up, Lotor simply looks down at him, pervasive smile on his lips.

“I assume the flower I gifted you got thrown into the trash,” he says and brushes a strand of white hair behind his ears. Keith’s eyes follow the movement, voice neutral when he says: “I didn’t. I put them in a glass of water.”

Lotor gives him an appreciating smile, and squats down next to him.

“Are you too fine to sit on the ground?” Keith jokes. It’s the first time he felt a little more light-headed in a while.

“Well noticed, smallest Galra there is.”

As quick as Keith thought he had gained the upper hand, he lost it again. With a grim expression, he turns his head away. Lotor does nothing to regain his sympathy, so Keith sighs in annoyance. He’s too curious. He can’t help it.

“The flower,” he says, one brow slightly furrowed as he turns his head back to Lotor again. “It’s—”

Before he can make any assumptions, Lotor nods and interrupts it. “A Galran one. With the destruction of Daibazaal and the Galran culture, it almost went extinct, too. I gained knowledge one of my fathers servants started growing it and bought it from him.”

“And now you’re letting it die,” Keith says and ignores the raise of Lotor’s eyebrows as he continues, “by giving it to me.”

Silence stretches uncomfortably between the two of them. Keith doesn’t dare to look at Lotor’s face, but then again… he’s not afraid of him. Lotor might be Zarkon’s son, but he is nothing like him. Keith still doesn’t trust him.

“It’s nothing to me,” Lotor starts, quietly, now sitting down too. Keith shifts to give him more space. “Galran values or culture.”

Keith nods, even though he doesn’t fully follow the conversation anymore. He’s thinking of the flower in his room, one of deep purple that it’s almost black, and the evening that Lotor had searched for him to gift it to him.

“My Galran heritage is worthless to me.” His voice is sharper than a Marmoran blade. “But it’s something to you.”

Keith glances up at him, eyes slightly widened.

“We’re both not that different—”

“What the fuck,” Keith interrupts him. “Don’t talk like that.”

The words are spit out harshly, making Lotor shut his lips instantly. His eyes are furious, Keith can read that much.

“I’m more than my heritage,” he hisses to Lotor. “And you don’t get to say what’s shit and what’s not.”

He watches the deep crease in Lotor’s forehead but gives it no second thought, breaking his gaze before he jumps up and leaves the hangar without another word.

At day, there are battles, but Keith is left alone in his room.

He watches the flower, as he hides from Allura, from Shiro, from the rest of the Paladins.

At night he doesn’t go back to the hangars, unwilling to meet Lotor there again. So, he just keeps watching the flower or staring out the round window into the endless starry sky, wishing there’d be someone he could talk to.

A week later, Keith realizes he had forgotten his gloves in the hangars and reluctantly walks back at night.

He doesn’t expect anyone to be there, but it’s just his luck to find a familiar figure standing there, long white hair falling like a waterfall down from his head to his hips.

Quickly, he moves past Lotor to retrieve his gloves and puts them back on, turns on the spot to get back to his room.

“It’s not fair of the Princess,” Lotor starts the conversation all on his own, “to treat you the way she does.”

Keith doesn’t immediately respond, but his steps falter.

“You basically told me Galra are shit three days ago,” he says, “it’s not like you’re on to talk.”

Lotor turns around and Keith does too, despite his wish to get back to his room, sleep and don’t wake until he has to get back to the base.

“For that, I apologize.” Lotor doesn’t use his usual grin, doesn’t pretense to be deeply sorry, like he usual does. That alone gives Keith room to believe him.

“I have spoken harshly of Galra, when there wasn’t a need to do so.” He steps closer to Keith, making him feel, indeed, small. Lotor is even taller than Allura, which means taller than Shiro, too. When it came to tall people, his best friend and mentor was his usual go-to comparison.

“But you’re nothing like them.” Lotor leans forward and Keith’s breath hitches. He takes an uncertain step back.

“What if I am,” he breathes. “What if there are good Galra, too?”

Lotor’s eyes pierce through him at that moment, clear and unforgiving. Before Keith’s heart can fully implode in his ribcage, the taller man casts his eyes down at Keith’s hands.

“The flower I gave you.” Lotor’s words cut into the air like a knife. “It’s called _klr’olnrak_.”

“I don’t understand,” Keith replies numbly.

“It means ‘contempt’,” he clarifies, taking a strand of Keith’s growing black hair and tucks it behind his ear. The touch of his fingertips tickle Keith’s ear. Against all odds, his face burns red.

“It’s telling,” Lotor continues, voice as cold as ice, “that it’s a flower from Daibazaal.”

He stares down into Keith’s eyes, making the smallest Blade forget everything around him. With a last look of arrogance, he turns around, but Keith holds onto his hand, not understanding why himself.

“It keeps growing,” Keith tells him. “And it looks beautiful.”

“Why are you telling me—”

“It doesn’t matter how many people only feel contempt when they are looking at that flower,” his words are feverish as he spills them quicker than his mind can catch up, “it still grows. It does what it wants. Even if it’s all on his own, even if it has lost its home—”

Since Lotor collaborated with Voltron, he has never looked overly surprised or agitated, but now, his eyes are wide, his brows are raised, and his mouth opened.

He pulls his arm from the firm grip Keith had on him, pulls him closer, too, with the uncalculated motion, and they are so close. Keith knows, he overstepped, but that first night, that first time he and Lotor had talked, really talked, he was there to listen. Not Allura, not Shiro, no one from Team Voltron was. Only Lotor, and he gifted him the flower in the first place—

“What are you—” Lotor mutters when suddenly, Keith is up close, still holding onto him, small gasp escaping his mouth.

It all happens too fast, too rushed, but good on its own—

Lotor grips onto his hips and drags him closer, and Keith opens his mouth when he leans down, the press of his lips not as forceful as he thought it would be.

Lotor props himself up against the ship, presses his own huge build against Keith’s smaller, but muscular frame. He cages him right there, but Keith likes the feeling, helplessly throws his arm around Lotor’s neck. Their make out is a tangle of limbs and bodies, a feverish and uncoordinated pressing of lips, sharp inhaling and soft groaning. Keith’s heart beats harshly in his chest, his mind scattered, hands all over the place. Lotor lifts him up, hands firmly on his ass as he hikes him up against the ship. Keith stutters a groan, when Lotor’s hard stomach presses between his legs, but he’s gone, so gone, too gone to have a lingering second and think about what’s happening.

When he goes to bed that night, for once his thoughts aren’t occupied with the Paladins or the Blades. It’s full of Lotor, full of deep purple, almost black flowers. A whole field of them.

The betrayal comes like a cold rain after a month of summer. Keith might be unable to look him in the eye, but he feels Lotor’s gaze on him.

“Keith,” he says, voice heroic as ever, with a small tinge of doubt. “Keith, sacrifices must have been made, or—”

Allura doesn’t let him get that far; somehow, she feels even more betrayed than Keith.

Lotor gets bailed out before Keith can even think of how he could face him ever again. Then there’s the fight at the clone facility, and a harsher fight when they face Lotor’s ship, the Sincline.

Days after, the flower is still blooming vigorously, vibrantly beaming its purple color. It stays in the vase, and even though Keith doesn’t water her again, she stays alive, a colorful reminder not of contempt, but of deception.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to recommend this fic to others, feel free to link or retweet this [Tweet](https://twitter.com/CruelisB/status/1176237594541199360)!
> 
> If you’re into Voltron rarepairs, check out [this discord](https://discord.gg/ZN5eNYH)!
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